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Omicron found in NYC deer raises questions about COVID transmission from animals to humans


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Omicron found in NYC deer raises questions about COVID transmission from animals to humans

About 15% of the 131 deer sampled in NYC positive for antibodies.

ByMary Kekatos   9 February 2022, 03:20

The discovery of deer in New York City infected with the omicron variant is raising questions about whether or not animals could potentially transmit COVID-19 to humans.

A new study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, found that 15% of 131 white-tailed deer sampled in the borough of Staten Island tested positive for antibodies.

Although there has not yet been any evidence that the virus can spread from animals to humans, the findings -- from Pennsylvania State University, the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation and conservation group White Buffalo -- raise concerns that deer could become a reservoir of the virus or lead to new mutations.

'We demonstrated for the first time that the omicron variant has also spilled into the wild animal species," Dr. Suresh Kuchipudi, a professor of virology at Penn State and lead author of the study, told ABC News. "The fact that the spillover continues to happen is quite concerning."

PHOTO: A white-tailed deer is photographed at Robert Moses State Park in Long Island, N.Y., Nov., 2009.

 

This is not the first time deer have been found to be infected with COVID-19. Researchers have found samples positive for the virus in deer dating as far back as September 2020 in Iowa.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, COVID-infected deer have since been discovered in several states including Illinois, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Experts say the new results were not surprising.

 

"We've seen from various studies … that deer are sometimes naturally infected from exposure to people," Dr. J. Scott Weese, a professor at Ontario Veterinary College at the University of Guelph in Canada, who was not involved in the study, told ABC News. "We've seen different strains and the strains that are found in deer reflect what is going on in people at the time."

There are a few theories for how deer became infected with omicron, and all involve humans as the starting point.

One theory is that deer came into direct contact with humans -- who likely got close to them and fed them -- and caught the virus. Another is that deer interacted with other animals such as cats that were infected with COVID from humans.

Dr. Samantha Wisley, a professor of wildlife ecology at the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Services, who was also not involved in the study, said wastewater is another potential path of transmission.

"The theory that I find most plausible is that we know that at least elements of the virus are shed in wastewater," she told ABC News. "So, people are either urinating or defecating out the virus. What we haven't seen is if that virus is still alive or able to infect other things; I don't believe that's been proven."

She continued, "But, at the same time, that would make a lot of sense that wastewater might be the way that it's getting from humans to wildfire, particularly deer."

Currently, data suggests deer can spread the virus to other deer but not that it spills over back to humans.

PHOTO: A researcher tries to swab a white-tailed deer at a wildlife center at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, on Feb. 2, 2022. White-tailed deer could become a reservoir for Coronavirus, health experts say.

A researcher tries to swab a white-tailed deer at a wildlife center at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, on Feb. 2, 2022. White-tailed deer could become a reservoir for Coronavirus, health experts say.

 

 

"Right now, your biggest chance of exposure [to COVID], even if you encounter deer, is still going to be from a person," Weese said. "But as we get less person-to-person transmission over time, if it's still in animals, then animals become more of a relative risk."

The experts said they are concerned if the virus keeps circulating around deer and remains present, rather than burning out. Deer-specific COVID variants could emerge as a result, they say.

"Right now, we're just seeing human strains that are going to deer and they're spreading around for a little bit," Weese said. "Now the question is will those stay in the deer? If they do, will they mutate and could that cause a problem?"

He continued, "So they could be a reservoir, they could be a source of mutants, or they could be what we call a dead-end, that the variants just go into deer and don't go any further."

Researchers are also concerned about finding older strains of the virus, such as the alpha or delta variants, in deer.

"Are they maintaining older lineage viruses or just becoming infected with the 'flavor of the month' of what variants are current in humans," Dr. Andrew Bowman, an associate professor in the department of veterinary preventive medicine at The Ohio State University, told ABC News.

"If deer can serve as a wildlife reservoir ... it's not a question of do we have enough hospital beds today. It's what strains are circulating and what's the risk of them entering back into humans whether that's in five, 10, 20 years," said Bowman, who was also not involved with the study.

Kuchipudi said he encourages everyone to get vaccinated against COVID to prevent more animals from becoming infected.

"I think those who are infected or tested positive should continue to follow the same mitigation measures as taking care of pets," he said. "The biggest source of the virus to animals is humans, and anyone who hadn’t done so should consider vaccination."

 

link  :  https://abcnews.go.com/US/scientists-find-1st-deer-infected-omicron-variant-york/story?id=82744120

 

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The Omicron variant has infected deer in New York City.

Deer on Staten Island are the first wild animals to have tested positive for the Covid variant. Some experts fear that deer could become a reservoir for the disease and infect humans.

Dr. Sarah Hamer, a veterinary ecologist, and her research team have been studying the effects of Covid-19 on animals and how it could prolong the pandemic.

Dr. Sarah Hamer, a veterinary ecologist, and her research team have been studying the effects of Covid-19 on animals and how it could prolong the pandemic

 

 

Feb. 8, 2022

White-tailed deer on Staten Island have been found carrying the highly transmissible Omicron variant of the coronavirus, marking the first time the variant has been reported in wild animals.

The findings add to a growing body of evidence that white-tailed deer are easily infected by the virus. The results are likely to intensify concerns that deer, which are widely distributed across the United States and live near humans, could become a reservoir for the virus and a potential source of new variants.

Researchers have previously reported that the virus was widespread in deer in Iowa in late 2020 and parts of Ohio in early 2021.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has confirmed infections in deer in 13 additional states — Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Virginia — Lyndsay Cole, a press officer for the agency’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, said last week. Those animals were infected with earlier variants of the virus.

Research suggests that deer are catching the virus from humans and then spreading it to other deer, and there is no evidence that the animals are transmitting it back to people. But longer-term, widespread circulation of the virus in deer would give the virus more opportunity to mutate, potentially giving rise to new variants that could spill over into people or other animal species.

 

link  :  https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/08/world/the-omicron-variant-has-infected-deer-in-new-york-city.html

 

ADVER

 

 

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33 minutes ago, cws said:

Better get those masks on all the deer. Make sure to enforce social distancing among them. Most definitely line them all up (6ft apart of course) for a couple of jabs and 17 boosters. 

That’s what I was going to say what a clueless heartless doctor talking to that deer, why didn’t she put a mask on the deer first since they are so effective!!! LOLOLOLOLOLOL.

 

Also looks like Big Pharma has just discovered another source of income we have to vaccinate all the deer every year along with getting them their booster shots every 6 months or all of them are going to die!! LOLOLOLOL..

 

Where are are the tree huggers and animal activists this is a travesty I tell ya!!!!

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Omicron found in deer: Previous cases of COVID in animals, impact on humans

In August, the US government said it found the world's first cases of COVID-19 in wild deer in Ohio, expanding the list of animals known to have tested positive for the disease

February 09, 2022 21:02:47 IST

Omicron found in deer: Previous cases of COVID in animals, impact on humans

White-tailed deer have been found to be carrying Covid-19 antibodies in New York. 

 

 

The discovery of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 in a white-tailed deer in New York has left scientists concerned that the deer species could become host of a new coronavirus variant.

According to Reuters, a lead researcher has found that 15 per cent of blood and nasal swab samples from 131 deers had COVID antibodies, suggesting that the animals had previously contracted coronavirus infections.

In August, the US government said it found the world's first cases of COVID-19 in wild deer in Ohio, expanding the list of animals known to have tested positive for the disease.

The finding was based on samples collected from deer months before the heavily mutated variant Omicron emerged to replace the previously dominant Delta variant in people in countries around the world.

The USDA had previously reported COVID-19 in animals including dogs, cats, tigers, lions, snow leopards, otters, gorillas and minks.

Let’s look at previous cases of COVID in animals and if they can infect humans with the novel coronavirus:

 

Previous cases of COVID in animals

– On 18 January, Hong Kong authorities announced that they would kill about 2,000 small animals, including hamsters, after several tested positive for coronavirus at a pet store where an employee was also infected.

The Associated Press report stated that the city will also stop the sale of hamsters and the import of small mammals. The pet shop employee tested positive for the Delta variant on 17 January, and several hamsters imported from the Netherlands at the store tested positive as well.

– In June 2021, a nine-year-old lioness Neela died of COVID-19, and few other lions tested positive for the virus at the Arignar Anna Zoological Park in Tamil Nadu's Chennai.

– A total of 28 elephants had also tested positive for COVID in Tamil Nadu’s Madhumalai forest reserve.

– In May 2021, two lionesses tested positive for COVID-19 at Etawah Safari Park in Uttar Pradesh and eight Asiatic lions housed in the Nehru Zoological Park (NZP) Hyderabad also tested positive for SARS-CoV2 virus in the same month.

– In April 2020, a tiger at New York’s Bronx Zoo had tested positive for COVID-19. It was believed to have contracted the virus from a caretaker at the zoo.

 

Can animals spread COVID-19?

The World Health Organisation said some animal species can be infected with the coronavirus, and animals can re-infect humans.

"That risk remains low but it is something that we are constantly looking at," said the WHO's Maria Van Kerkhove.

Of seven million virus sequences submitted to global platforms, around 1,500 are from animals.

According to the US’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the virus that causes COVID-19 can spread from people to animals through close contact. However, the risk of animals spreading COVID-19 to people is low.

Pets can get serious illness from infection with the virus, but it is extremely rare, it said.

 
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Omicron Has Been Found in Deer—That Should Worry Us

Deer.jpg?w=800&quality=85

 

BY JEFFREY KLUGER    FEBRUARY 9, 2022 9:56 AM
 
There are more than 30 million white-tailed deer in the U.S. That’s a boon for hunters, a headache for gardeners, a hazard for drivers—and now, it appears, a possible problem in the world’s ongoing effort to control the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a new study (which has not yet been peer-reviewed) published on bioRxiv, researchers at Penn State University found that several white-tailed deer captured and tested on Staten Island in New York were infected with the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2. It is the first such discovery in non-human animals.

COVID-19 has been found before in deer. In 2020 and 2021, the U.S. Department of Agriculture detected earlier versions of the virus in 481 deer sampled in 15 states. But the Omicron variant is causing greater worry than those earlier strains simply because of its extreme transmissibility and the close quarters in which humans and deer often live.

The study was small; researchers took nasal swabs from 68 deer, and they found Omicron in five of them. The question the discovery raises is, how transmissible is the virus from human to deer and back again? For now, at least, the researchers can’t say. The study merely showed that the animals were harboring the virus but revealed nothing about how they acquired it, whether they shed it, or even if they are capable of passing it among themselves.

“As we continue to find these spillovers in animals, such as deer, the complexity of the virus evolution and the transmission networks becomes much more complicated,” says Suresh Kuchipudi, a Penn State veterinary virologist and a co-author of the study. “The potential does exist that the virus could circulate among the deer and they could become a major reservoir.”

Troublingly, at least one of the deer in the sample was found to not only harbor the virus but also to have a high level of antibodies against it. That suggests a sort of wildlife equivalent of a breakthrough infection: an animal that had had the virus once before, developed a natural immune response to it, but then became reinfected.

If deer are carrying the virus, there’s no reason to assume other animals aren’t as well. While it’s not practical—or even possible—to test every species of animal that comes within infectious distance of humans, certain animals are of particular interest to investigators. Kuchipudi is concerned about deer mice, skunks, and feral cats, which previous laboratory studies have shown are easily infected with COVID-19. Other species of rodents are also causing worry.

“We can’t rule out the possibility of rodents picking up the virus from people and spreading it to other animals that live in the same ecological space,” Kuchipudi says.

The biggest concern for now, the Penn State authors argue, is not so much whether deer will be one more meaningful vector in the spread of Omicron to humans. We’re doing a perfectly fine job of spreading it among ourselves already. Rather, the deer could become a petri dish for viral mutation and the emergence of still more variants, which could, theoretically, jump species and infect humans.

“If unmonitored, the continued circulation of this virus in any animal species could result in evolution and emergence of completely novel variants that may potentially undermine the protection provided by the current vaccines,” says Kuchipudi. “The last thing we want is to be caught by surprise by a completely novel variant that can emerge from animals.”

Researchers are now trying to figure out how to mitigate that risk. There is some precedent for dealing with animals found to harbor COVID-19, but it is extreme: When 11 hamsters in a Hong Kong pet shop were recently found to have COVID-19, authorities ordered the killing of 2,000 hamsters, and when the virus was found circulating among 17 million farmed mink in Denmark in November 2020, the mink were slaughtered. Taking such measures against infected deer in the U.S. is, obviously, not possible.

Rather, Kuchipudi recommends, American wildlife management experts could begin with a program of capturing and vaccinating deer in areas where the virus is found to be circulating. Looking for the source of the virus—through wastewater or other environmental contaminants—might be an option as well.

Infected deer do not represent the most pressing of the problems health officials face in controlling the pandemic, but they do serve as one more sign of the ubiquity of the virus. SARS-CoV-2 is a decidedly opportunistic pathogen, increasingly undiscriminating in the hosts it infects and will continue to infect. A virus that seemed to arrive all at once more than two years ago will not be leaving us anywhere nearly as quickly.

 

link  :  https://time.com/6146253/omicron-deer-covid-19/

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